2211 - This Week in Hobby
Loving too many Warhammer armies, weird fantasy, and walking markets.
The Joyful Agony of Loving Too Many (Warhammer Armies)
I should be writing about an army. That was the plan. Alabastrine Candle, then Anathema, then Warhammer again. Age of Sigmar is taking a hot minute to spin up, so something from 40K. Then I hit a problem.
Which army?
Oh. No.
Let me take a step back. When I first fell into the hobby, I saw all the cool models and I knew there was going to be a problem. I love to collect things. At one time it was laserdiscs (yes, really!) Books. Comics. Cards. I've been through the nerdy gamut. And I'm not complaining, it was fun! Even now, I still collect things. I've got the Exalted and Earthdawn books to prove it. Warhammer's a pretty natural fit if you're the kind of person that likes to collect.
Of course, our good pal James Workshop knows this. He relies on it. Collectors are the lifeblood of his profit and loss statements. I don't begrudge a company trying to make a profit, but I've got bills to pay. So I did what I do best: I created rules. And then I immediately broke them.
My former First Rule of Warhammer was one army from each major faction. Age of Sigmar makes this easy. There are four Grand Alliances. 40K makes it a little bit more difficult. Imperium of Man is a faction, but the webstore splits out Space Marines for a reason. I liked the symmetry of four armies for each game.
I think it lasted a month?
First it was the Nighthaunt, you see. They called to me, and I loved them. But there were models I wanted in the Soul Wars box and, well... Now I had a Stormcast Eternals army too I guess. But the Stormcast weren't my preferred Order faction. I wanted the floating derring-do of the Kharadron Overlords. But I guess that's okay. Two Order factions can't be that bad. And... Wait. Wait. The Seraphon are what? Did you just say magical space lizards? Oh.
Thus begat the New First Rule of Warhammer. I could collect up to 500 pts, a Combat Patrol, of anything. To grow beyond that level, I had to earn capacity through each game's narrative mode. It's fancy way of saying that I could start with the smallest functional army, but I had to play if I wanted more. It's all fine and good to have pretty models on a shelf. I love pretty models on a shelf. But armies I only ever picked up and looked at didn't need to grow to tens of units.
I've held that line, for the most part, ever since. Within the last few weeks I've considered making a slight tweak to it, but it's a refinement. In addition to earning more models through play, I can also earn models through painting. If every unit I own for an army is painted and based, I can buy one more unit. My Pile of Potential is deep, but if I'm having fun working on a project I want to encourage that. At the moment there's little to no risk of actually painting myself out of models. I doubt I ever will. It's nice to have the option.
Which brings me back to where I started. I've got my foot in the door of probably half the currently available 40K armies. I'm suffering an embarrassment of choice. Which one should I write about next? Do I tell you about The Ghostwolf? Develop a custom Genestealer Cult? Talk about my all-biker Dark Angels successor chapter? Necron dynasty? T'au? I honestly don't know.
I love too many Warhammer armies. That much is clear. I'm going to inflict that love on anyone within earshot.
Just as soon as I can figure out which one to talk about...
Hey, Check This Out!
Games Workshop
Kill Team: Nachmund will be up for pre-order starting Saturday. This new boxed set introduces Aeldari Corsairs and Chaos Space Marines to the fray.
The bits and bobs of Kill Team: Chalnath will also be available separately.
TTRPGs
OSR and OSR-like systems are all the rage right now. What's the phrase? "So hot." And what does any self-respecting system need? Megadungeons. DNGN is here to save the day. Taking nods from one-page dungeons, this zine features on level of dungeon per two-page spread.
Ready for even more inspiration? The Phylactery Omnibus collects the first four weird fantasy zines for easy of ingestion by your eye-holes. So much of the appeal is in the art, which I can't show you because that's STEALING. Click through and take a look and you'll understand.
Promote your D&D shopping trip to a first-class adventure with Cyran's Magnificent Walking Marketplace. Enjoy the sights, the sounds, the touch, the feel! Over 200 magical items, and a deep bench of interesting merchants to purvey them.
In Other News
If you're into sci-fi and fantasy, you probably know who Brandon Sanderson is. He's written some more books, and put them up on Kickstarter.